Qatar

Every week, the OpenNet Initiative provides a weekly news roundup (dubbed "Threats to the Open Net") in addition to our usual in-depth blog posts. If you would like to subscribe to the RSS feed for our newsreel, our entire blog,...

Users in Qatar, UAE, Yemen, and Kuwait reported via Twitter in the past couple of days that they are not able to access the blog hosting platform tumblr.com or any other blog hosted by the platform. This filtering incident surprised both the...

March 2011
Authored by Helmi Noman and Jillian C. York.
To view this bulletin as a PDF, click here.
Executive Summary
The OpenNet Initiative has documented network filtering of the Internet by national governments in over forty countries worldwide. Countries use this network filtering...

Background
Under the leadership of Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Qatar has become more liberal.“Country Profile: Qatar,” BBC News, March 11, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/country_profiles/791921.stm. However, any organized opposition to the emirate is illegal, and political parties are nonexistent.United Nations Development Programme on...

According to one user of Qatar Living, popular site "Tagged" has been blocked by QTEL, which operates in 17 countries and is currently Qatar's only Internet service provider (Vodafone has also been given a license and will begin service soon, ...